Mobile information delivery systems that deliver information based on a user's location are common. Examples can be found in museums and in vehicles.
One such system delivers audio and/or visual information when a user enters an identification number into the system. Examples of this type of system can be found in museums around the world. A museum visitor sees an art object in which he would like more information, and enters the object's corresponding identification number, which is usually found on the wall or display near the object, into the audio guide device.
A deficiency of this type of system is that it requires the visible placement and display of an appropriate identification number for each piece of information. This is generally not feasible for many applications—especially for use in outdoor areas, including parks and city streets.
Another system found in both museums and trade-shows delivers information when a user enters a specifically identified area, delineated by some type of trigger mechanism such as an infra-red beam or a signal triangulated from a wireless local area computer network.
A deficiency of this type of system is that it requires the establishment of the physical trigger mechanism.
Another type of location based information deliver system is one in which a user tunes a radio to a specific frequency to receive the information. The user is visually informed of the availability of the information by a posted sign of some type.
Among the deficiencies of this type of system are that it again requires a visible display of the radio frequency and the user must be carrying an appropriate radio.
Location-based information delivery systems for use in vehicles are another example of mobile information deliver systems that deliver information based on a user's location. Such information deliver systems include digital map displays found in many automobiles. Such systems also include vehicle-based gps tour systems which deliver information related to a user's location—and potentially their velocity and/or direction of travel and/or visual orientation. The driver may (but is not required) to input relevant information such as intended destination and/or type of information requested, and the program delivers relevant information during the vehicle's trip. In these systems information is delivered for presentation automatically when the user comes within a prescribed distance of a point-of-interest. These systems provide the information in a useful and appropriate manner.
These vehicle-based information delivery systems have some deficiencies. For pedestrian use, such a system requires that accurate location information be delivered to the control program. This often does not happen in a pedestrian situation, especially in an obstructed area where the global positioning satellite signals do not always provide an accurate reading of the user's location. A pedestrian walking in an urban environment will often encounter this problem, with his calculated location being near, but not exactly his actual position.
Another problem with such a system that incorporates the use of velocity, direction of travel, or visual orientation is that this information may not be available to the system. A system that relies on global positioning satellites, when used in a pedestrian application, may not have accurate data regarding any of these pieces of information since the low speed of travel combined with inherent error in location information delivered by global position satellites or other such systems frequently renders the calculation of velocity and direction of travel impossible.
A system that relies on visual orientation or automatic delivery of information has the short-coming that there may be multiple pieces of information related to the visual orientation of the user and the user may only want to listen to some subset, or none, on the information. Systems described in prior art that do not incorporate visual orientation also have this deficiency.
Another deficiency of a vehicle-based mobile information that uses automatic delivery of multi-media output is that the user may not be prepared to listen to the output, especially if the output device is a headphone apparatus.
A further deficiency of such a system is that it fall short of its' potential usefulness by failing to provide information about additional items that may be near the user, since the trigger only initiates one specific piece of information. There may be multiple items or locations of interest near the user that are in view and additional items of interest within a short distance of the user about which he should be informed. The user can listen to the information and/or travel to those additional locations.